


Baby Makes Twelve

by Sir_Bedevere



Category: Ghosts (TV 2019)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Fluff, Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:55:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24715672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sir_Bedevere/pseuds/Sir_Bedevere
Summary: It was Julian of all people who first worked it out.“Do you know,” he said. “I think this baby can see me.”“Don’t be stupid,” Alison said, but even she had to admit that Iris did seem to be following him with her eyes.“You always get nutters saying their babies or their dogs see ghosts!” Julian said. “Maybe they’re not nutters after all.”Sometimes a family is two parents, their baby and the ten ghosts that haunt their house. Scenes from one such family.
Relationships: Alison/Mike (Ghosts TV 2019)
Comments: 52
Kudos: 249





	Baby Makes Twelve

**Author's Note:**

> I first watched Ghosts when it aired last year, then just re-watched it in anticipation of series two coming soon, and now I'm in love. 
> 
> Anyway, this turned out to be massively longer than I was planning but I had a lot of fun with it, so I hope you will too.

They were all waiting by the gate when they got home, even Fanny and the Captain, who Alison was certain were going to find every reason to complain for the next eighteen years. 

Mike stopped the car and asked, “The gang all here?”

Alison nodded, and he rolled down his window. 

“I’m a daddy!” he yelled, then accelerated down the drive.

Alison was knackered, but she smiled when she heard Kitty and Pat’s whoops of joy, and watched in the mirror as they all trailed along behind the car. They must have been excited in their own way - they didn’t tend to hang about much anymore, waiting for her. Not now they knew that she was always coming back. 

Like a bunch of puppies with separation anxiety or something. 

Getting into the house with them hanging about though was always chaos, but now there was more stuff to carry. 

“‘I’ve got these,” Mike said, picking up every single bag in one hand and juggling his keys in the other. “You bring the important thing.”

The ‘important thing’ was the baby - _the actual real life baby_ \- who was sleeping in her carrier. Alison was so slow getting out of the car that the ghosts had all caught up before she even got both feet on the ground.

And they were in fine form.

“Oh, Alison, you look so beautiful!” Kitty exclaimed, her eyes bright. “Like you could sit for a portrait right now.”

“Look tired,” Robin said, peering at her. “Is hard. Having baby.”

“Of course it’s hard, Robin!” Julian chimed in, with the exact same voice he’d been using for the past nine months. The voice which implied that he was something of an authority on childbirth. Or, in other words, a typical Tory. 

“Alright!” Alison said, holding up her hands. “Quiet. Right now, please.”

She must have looked really rough, because it was possibly the only time they’d all done as they were told right away.

“Okay, thank you. Now I’m pleased to see you all. I’m glad to be home. But Robin is right. I am really tired, and so is Mike.”

She swept a quick look along the line, then made eye contact with the Captain. 

“I know you’re all - interested. But if I don’t get a nap right now, I will find a way to bring you all back to life and then murder you all one by one. So you can all look at her now and then leave me alone until I call you. Deal?”

The Captain nodded, and immediately started to chivvy. Thank God for his chivvying skills.

“Alright everyone. Form up for baby presentation.”

Alison leaned over her daughter to undo the seat belt. Her daughter. It was completely wild. More wild than anything else she’d ever done, up to and including living in a site of historical interest with a gang of ghosts. 

It was strange, but as she took the baby out, she was excited. No one had met her yet. Not Mike’s mum or Alison’s younger sister, or any of their friends. But the ghosts were here, and they were waiting. The Captain had organised them into a sensible line leading up to the front door. Pat and Kitty were bouncing on their toes. Mary was holding Humphrey’s head and smiling, and even Julian had something like a grin on his face. Thomas and Robin watched her closely, and although Fanny and the Captain on the end of the line didn’t look exactly thrilled, they were there and waiting. Why shouldn’t this strange bunch be the first to meet the baby? They had as much right as anyone else. It was their home too, after all.

“Alright,” Alison said. “Here she is. As yet unnamed, but ten fingers and ten toes.”

The next few minutes were the sort of garbled noise that she was really good at tuning out, so for the most part she did. It saved a lot of brain cells. 

“...looks like Mike!”

“You don’t know that, she’s so small…”

“She be a pretty little scrap.”

“Is girl, yeah?”

“Of course she is a girl.”

“Could have fooled me with that blue blanket.”

“Dale had a pink blanket, Carol said it was all nonsense to…”

Mike appeared at the door, two mugs of tea in hand. 

“Time for bed, I reckon,” he said, and the Captain cleared his throat.

“You heard Michael. Everyone in.”

They were all still chattering, and Thomas was shooting her mournful calf eyes, but Alison made it to the bottom of the stairs. 

“A few hours,” she said. “I promise. Then you can all come and meet her properly.”

“Very good,” the Captain nodded, and herded everyone away. 

In less than five minutes, Alison was crawling into bed with a cup of tea, and even the bloody ghost pigeon had the good sense to keep away.

**

They named the baby Iris, after Fanny said it might be nice to pick a name to honour Lady Heather. 

“A new flower in the Button House will really bring some light into these old halls again.”

Alison thought that was the nicest thing Fanny had ever said.

**

Iris, it turned out, was a bit of a night owl as well as an early riser. Mike’s mum told Alison not to worry, that Mike was also a very fussy baby for the first few months of his life. 

“I knew it would be your fault,” Alison told him, although not too often because he did more than his fair share of sleepless nights.

“Very modern, your Mike,” Pat said sometimes, as he watched Mike pace up and down, or go off for a nappy change. “I wish I’d been more hands on with Daley. When he was small.”

It wasn’t often that Pat got like that, but there wasn’t anything Alison could really do about it except listen if he wanted to talk. It always seemed to help in the end. It would probably help a lot of the others if they talked sometimes too. About real things. About feelings. In his own way, Pat was pretty modern too.

On one restless night, a warm one in July, Alison was walking up and down the garden at three in the morning. Iris wasn’t crying - well, not wailing - but she was very upset about something, and wanted to make sure that Alison knew about it.

“Poor baby,” Alison murmured, jiggling her up and down. She wondered if it was too warm. Perhaps it would be cooler down in the kitchen. She turned to go inside and nearly fell over when a shape loomed out of the shadows.

“Bloody hell, Thomas, you could have warned me you were there!”

“My apologies, Alison, I shall just go-”

“No, it’s alright. You just scared me. Stay. If you want.”

She wasn’t sure that he would want to though. Thomas had been acting very weirdly - well, more weirdly than usual - ever since the baby came home. He hadn’t complimented Alison at all, and barely quoted any poetry. It was a bit of a welcome break, but there was also something wrong. 

“You’ve been quiet, Thomas,” she said. She was a mother now. No time to mess about. “Is it the baby?”

“No. That is, not in particular. I do not believe I ever actually met an infant before.”

Alison stayed quiet. She knew him well enough by now. And, sure enough…

“It is - well, your child. Of your flesh and blood, and half of Michael’s. I could perhaps have tempted you away from him one day but the bond between mother and child is a sacred thing. I shall not break it.”

“Oh.”

“I have no resentment in my heart for the child. Do not be concerned. But I have these past few months been tending to a broken heart. I know now that you shall never be mine.”

Alison bit her lip and tried not to smile. She’d wanted them all to talk more about their feelings. She couldn’t laugh at the first one who did. Even if it was Thomas. 

“Well, thank you for telling me. I hope - can we be friends?”

In the light flooding out from the hall, she saw a small twitch of his lips and he nodded.

“I think I should like that very much.”

**

It was Julian of all people who first worked it out.

He was pacing up and down listening to the radio as Alison attempted to make soup under Mary’s watchful gaze. 

“Do you know,” he said. “I think this baby can see me.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Alison said, but even she had to admit that Iris did seem to be following him with her eyes, and she definitely did turn her head when Mary called her name. 

“You always get nutters saying their babies or their dogs see ghosts!” Julian said. “Maybe they’re not nutters after all.”

“She’s too smalls to be convenings with the devil,” Mary fretted, twisting her apron in her hand as Julian began to do some extremely undignified star jumps. Iris was watching his every move. 

Alison was very close to being upset about the whole thing, until she told Mike. 

“So she can see them,” he shrugged. “Lots of people say their kid or their cat sees things that aren’t there. We just know for sure now that they probably can. Kind of cool if you think about it.”

“I suppose so,” Alison said. “As long as they all calm down about it. I’m getting headaches from all the noise so I can only imagine how she is feeling.”

Iris gurgled from her basket in the corner of the bedroom, and Mike grinned, kissing Alison’s forehead. 

“She’s pretty good at telling us how she feels.”

So in the end, it was just another weird thing, in the endless parade of weird things that was her life.

And Alison honestly couldn’t say she was too concerned about it when a few weeks later, Iris treated them all to her first proper laugh, and the thing she was finding so hilarious was the silly dance that Robin was doing in front of her carry cot.

**

“You know,” Mike said, as he was dangling half out of the loft hatch with a torch between his teeth. “We’ve saved a lot of money on baby monitors.”

“That’s what you’re thinking about right now?” Alison said, peering up at him, toolbox in hand. “Concentrate on the wiring!”

“Just saying. They’re useful to have around.”

The ghosts _were_ useful. No denying that. Right then, Iris was asleep in her basket down in the drawing room, where the ghosts tended to gather in the afternoons for their clubs and arguments. In theory, Kitty or Pat were in charge of keeping an eye on her during naptime, but Alison would trust almost any of them to do it - except poor old Humphrey, of course, but that wasn’t his fault. 

“They are useful,” she said. “How long do you think Iris will be able to see them? Think she’ll grow out of it?”

“Dunno,” Mike said, poking at one of the wires. “I googled it. Some people said their kids were quite old before it stopped. Ten, eleven even.”

“Do you think that it will upset her?”

Alison climbed up the ladder and gave him the wire strippers. 

“Upset her?”

“If one day she can’t see them anymore?”

“Have to worry about that when it happens,” Mike said. “Right, you sure the electrics are off up here?”

“Yep. We don’t want any extra ghosts around here.”

“Ha ha,” he said, then started to strip the wire. Alison watched him for a bit, then grinned as Humphrey’s body stumbled along at the other end of the corridor. 

“Alison!” 

Thomas appeared through the wall. 

“Young Iris is most distressed. Fanny says she is hungry.”

“Alright. Thanks, Thomas.”

“Baby monitor?” Mike asked.

“Baby monitor. Don’t fall on your head while I’m gone.”

“Okie dokie.”

**

“Are you sure you want me to go?” Mike asked, rolling his window down. “I can just tell them-”

“No, you go,” Alison said. “You deserve a break.”

Mike didn’t look certain but he nodded. “Call me if-”

“I will. Go. I love you.”

“Love you.”

As the car pulled out of the gate, Mary appeared at her shoulder.

“She’s -”

“I know,” Alison sighed. “I’m coming.”

Teething. What a nightmare. And it was the long weekend Mike had been looking forwards to for so long, his cousin’s stag do away in Blackpool. There was no way Alison was going to stop him going. She could cope with Iris for a few days. She’d just catch up on sleep when he got back. 

It was hard though. Iris was really going through the wars, and nothing much seemed to help, except talking to her and walking her up and down even more than usual. She only stopped crying when she put the cold chew toy in her mouth, and then immediately started crying again when it wasn’t cold anymore. 

Alison took her upstairs for most of that afternoon. It wasn’t fair on the ghosts to have her screaming all the time. 

It was almost evening when the Captain stepped tentatively into Alison’s bedroom. She was dozing on the sofa, holding Iris and half watching some documentary on TV. The soft droning seemed to be soothing her a little bit. Or maybe Iris was just knackered. She was usually such a happy baby. It had to be taking it out of her. 

“Alison. I can’t help but notice your routine is off today. You have not eaten a single thing since Michael left.”

“You’re right.”

“If - I could watch over the baby for you. For a moment. If you want to rectify the situation.”

Alison tipped her head back and eyed the Captain. He wasn’t usually the first to volunteer for babysitting. 

“You just want the tanks on, don’t you? It’s Thursday.”

It was a sign of how far they had come that he didn’t even bristle about it. 

“There is no need for such a tone, Alison. We cannot lose all sense of routine just because one of the troops is feeling unwell.”

“Alright,” Alison said, too tired to argue and also very hungry, now that he mentioned it. “Come here.”

She placed Iris in her bouncy chair and switched the TV over for him. The Captain at least had the good grace not to look smug as he took his usual seat. 

“She will start crying,” Alison said. “But I’ll only be ten minutes so you will just have to deal with it.”

He grunted, already ensconced in the TV. 

In the end, she took a bit longer than ten minutes. Kitty, Pat and Robin followed her to the kitchen, and it was nice to have a little bit of conversation, even if that did mostly consist of mediating a debate between Kitty and Robin as to whether chess was better than backgammon. Kitty, it turned out, had very strong opinions on backgammon. 

When Alison eventually left them, she carried a tray with soup and a giant cup of tea up the stairs and along a suspiciously quiet corridor. Maybe Iris had finally cried herself to exhaustion.

When she got into the bedroom, the tanks were still playing on the TV but she couldn’t see the Captain. Had he actually got up and left the baby alone? 

Then she realised the voice on the TV wasn’t the only one she could hear. The Captain - _the Captain_ was sitting on the floor next to Iris’ bounce chair, his stick resting across his lap, and he was talking to her. 

“...called Operation Goodwood. I was supposed to be there, you know, but I - well, there were events and I never did make it over there. But it was magnificent. Look here, you see, the Sherman -”

“All okay here?” Alison asked, circling around the sofa and trying not to smile. The Captain would only think she was laughing at him, when actually she thought her heart might be about to burst into rainbows. 

“Oh. Yes,” he said, not meeting her eye. “I just - young Iris here seemed interested, so I just thought I could - yes, we are very well, thank you.”

He’d positioned himself so that Iris could see him, and she was watching him with wide eyes, usually only reserved for Kitty’s singing or Robin’s dances. Alison couldn’t tell him that either. He’d only get all gruff and run away. So instead, Alison sat down on the sofa, her tray balanced on her knees. 

“Great. Do you want me to turn it up a bit?” 

“Oh. Er - as long as it doesn’t distress the baby. I’ve actually seen this one before.”

**

At ten months, Iris walked and the fun really started then. She didn’t seem to mind that she couldn’t touch most of the people who lived in her house, and Alison noticed that she never put her arms up for any of the ghosts to pick her up like she did for her and Mike. It was like she had just worked it out for herself. 

According to the baby books, and Pat and Mike’s mum, Iris was a pretty chill baby. She could already say Mumma and Dadda, and Alison was amazed every single day that the kid was hers. Half of her and half of Mike, and so loved. 

Iris was so, so loved, and not just by her parents. 

Alison sat in the drawing room during one food club, half listening to Humphrey tell them about the roast swan that had almost caused a diplomatic incident with Henry VIII, and half watching as Iris stumbled around chasing after Robin at the other end of the room. She was shrieking with laughter, and Robin was cackling, slowing down just enough for her to almost get him, and then dancing out of her way. 

“Come on, baby,” Robin said, holding out his hands. “Over here. Come on!”

Iris tripped up and fell flat on her face, but before Alison could get up, she started to cry. 

“ ‘bin, ‘bin,” she wailed. ‘bin!”

Robin froze, his mouth open. He looked at Alison. Then he dropped to his knees next to Iris.

“Robin here. No cry, baby.”

Iris sat up and looked at him. Her lip still trembled.

“Silly floor. Ouchie. Robin here. Is okay.”

“ ‘bin,” Iris said again, then smiled, before she hauled herself to her feet. Crying over. Just like that. Then she ran over to the chair and hid behind it. 

“ ‘bin!” she called, in a sing-song voice.

“Oh, how lovely!” Kitty cried. “Her third word is Robin’s name.”

Robin didn’t often smile. Not a real, proper smile, but he was smiling then. 

“Alison, you hear? Baby say my name.”

“I heard, Robin,” Alison said. “Let me get Mike.”

She hurried through the house, calling for him. She thought her chest might burst open - she was so suddenly very happy. 

“Mike!”

“Yeah?” he asked, popping his head out of the kitchen. “What are you grinning about?”

“Come and see what your daughter is doing,” she said, taking his hand. 

When they got back to the drawing room, Iris was still behind her chair, laughing her head off. 

“ ‘bin!” she called. 

“What’s she saying?” Mike asked. 

“It’s Robin’s name. He was playing with her and now she is hiding from him and calling him to come and find her.”

“Oh brill,” Mike grinned. “Hide and seek! What are the others doing?”

“It’s chaos,” Alison said, wrapping her arms around Mike’s waist and resting her cheek on his shoulder. “Robin’s got Pat, Kitty, Mary, Thomas _and_ Julian pretending they don’t know where Iris is either. They’re all calling for her and looking everywhere except where she is. And the Captain and Fanny are sitting over there with Humphrey, watching, and I’ve never seen any of them look so happy.”

“Ah, I wish I could see,” Mike said. “But then I can hear that laugh, and maybe that’s good enough, huh?”

“It’s pretty great,” Alison nodded, then wiped her eyes on his shoulder before any of the ghosts noticed she was crying.


End file.
